


A Taste for Birds

by Only_1_Truth (orphan_account)



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Under the Red Hood
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Jason survies - but things get complicated, M/M, Torture, the Joker is a curious monster
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2013-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-10 01:46:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/780356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Only_1_Truth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Starts where 'Under the Red Hood' starts - and deviates from there.  </p><p>The Joker has Jason Todd, and nearly kills him.  In fact, he thinks that he does kill him.  In reality, he just came lethally close, and Jason may never be the same.  </p><p>But the Joker has never played with any of Batman's little birds before, and its rare that anyone he plays with survives...</p><p>When he finds out that his victim is alive and perhaps not even entirely sane, the game just gets too good for the Joker to resist.</p><p>
  <em>...or, at least, that was the plan for this fic.  I admit that I bit off more than I could chew, and hope that someone might finish this work. </em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Taste for Birds

**Author's Note:**

> I saw 'Under the Red Hood' and just HAD to write this! It is violent - this first chapter details my version of how Jason's encounter with the Joker went, torture included (that is why 'torture' is tagged!). Ye be warned. 
> 
> More chapters to come, when I find the time. 
> 
> Comments are appreciated!

“There are so few ways to get to really know a person nowadays,” the voice went on jovially, a stark contrast to the sound of the crowbar spinning in the air with a brief, airy whir. Despite himself, Robin flinched, knowing that the sound was too far away to cause damage, but remembering with crystal clarity what it felt like when it _was_. The Joker continued, “It’s just such a technological age! All emails, and chat rooms, and other such cyber-drivel. We’ve forgotten how to connect.” The whoosh changed intensity, and this time it arced in to slam into Robin’s leg, nearly breaking it. His involuntary scream echoed off the walls. Even with his eyes tightly closed with the pain, the young man could visualize the painted smile aimed at him gleefully. There was another strike of the crowbar connecting with his flesh before the Joker continued his one-sided conversation, reaching his conclusion with gleeful menace honeying his voice, “A good, friendly beating, though – now that’s a way to get to know somebody!”

  
In punctuation, the last stroke was more vicious than the last, but this time Robin bit his lip to hold the scream in. It was like closing your hands around fire with the purpose of containing it – the agony seared all the worse for being restrained, and Robin couldn’t deny the choked gasp. He tasted copper from biting his lip, but he’d been tasting bloody copper for what felt like years now.

“Oooooh, so you’re going quiet on me now?” The Joker, a live-wire of mad energy, stalked with his usual clipped, intent step around his plaything, leaning down with an avid leer as if the view from every angle presented a new revelation to him. He was tapping the bloodied crowbar back against his shoulder, somehow without dirtying his suit in the slightest. Sometimes he loved gore everywhere; sometimes the Joker was as meticulous as a cat on crack. “No gallant threats? None of that Batman wit?” Suddenly the Joker reared back, rocking on his heels a second before breaking into manic laughter. The sound scoured the air like a wire-brush, and the boy on the floor had to work not to cower. As soon as the Joker gained control of himself, standing with the tips of his shoes nearly touching the curved, shuddering line of Robin’s back, the Joker finished grandly, “What am I saying?! Bats has got about as much verbal wit as a shoebox.” He started laughing again, but most of it was wasted on Robin as he was subjected to more beatings, his efforts to keep silent mostly failing. When he’d lost the wind and strength to snap catty retorts – he’d lost that at probably the same point that he’d felt multiple ribs splinter – Jason had decided to do the only other thing he could, which was to stay silent, and deny the Joker the amusement of him crying out.  That stubbornness was all he had to hold onto.

Robin was nearly unconscious by the time the Joker – certain that Batman wouldn’t be finding them anytime soon – subsided again, once more swirling the crowbar like a jaunty walking stick in a steady hum of motion. Robin had long-since decided that he hated the sound almost as much as the Joker’s laughter. The last hit of the crowbar had knocked Jason onto his stomach, but he couldn’t think how to twitch a muscle that didn’t hurt from the simple effort of moving.

“You know, I just realized,” the Joker went on, stalking up with bouncy steps and another harmless revolution of the crowbar, “I’ve never played with any of Batman’s little birds before. Did you know that?” Jason didn’t answer, not even to groan, and suddenly the Joker’s playful manner transformed into a furious one like a switch being flipped. He dropped down next to Jason so quickly that he boy couldn’t do anything but suck in a painful breath before a long-fingered hand was fisted in his hair and pulling his head back. “I said, **did you know that?!** ” the Joker raged. Then he fell silent, the wave of emotion gone as quickly as it had arisen. Jason still hadn’t managed to pull together an answer, partially because the new position was making his bruised muscles and broken ribs pull and grind, and partially because the explosion of temper had nearly overcome him with fear. On the verge of blacking out, he just focused on breathing, and for a moment that was all that filled the silence.  
Then the Joker let his head drop, startling Robin with that small jolt of pain as his face hit the concrete floor for a second before his senses were bombarded again, this time by the Joker’s hand roughly petting the back of his head. “It’s all right, it’s all right,” he cooed like poison, tone coaxing and wheedling and so false it all but stank of rot. As was typical, he soon switched temperaments again, growing contemplative: the hand retreated, and Robin stiffened as he felt the light _tap-tap-tap_ of the curve of the crowbar touching repetitively to the back of his skull, like a heavy finger thumping a table in thoughtfulness. Even in that mild contact, Robin could feel the inherent power and weight that could cave his head in with just a slightly more determined application of strength.  It scared him so much that he felt his heart stutter in his chest, and it took everything for him to keep the last of his courage from buckling.  

“Who am I kidding?” The Joker started into a fit of giggles. The tapping stopped. Jason forced his eyes open, but couldn’t find the strength to turn his head, so all he saw was the floor and the toes of the Joker’s immaculate shoes. The maniac cracked up laughing, forcing words out, “It’s not going to be all right!”

Robin spat on his shoes, feeling a fierce flash of joy at seeing spittle and blood ruin the perfection of the dark polish. The furious coil of vengeance managed to stifle the fear even as Robin accepted the fact that retaliation was coming.

Expecting retaliation mean nothing when it came to the Joker: he moved with such speed that most people couldn’t have gotten a thought into their head. His fury was intense, fueled into a crowbar as well as precise punches and kicks. The Joker didn’t care about keeping clean anymore, and within seconds Robin was screaming, the sound choked and wet from broken ribs and blood everywhere inside and out.

When the Joker finally subsided, his mad rage gone, his captive was barely breathing and even less conscious. The Joker was panting hard enough that his arms rose and fell at his sides, crowbar dripping gore, and his thin chest heaved with pants. “You’re mouthy,” he pointed out, sounding petulant, but then lifting a blood-spattered hand to lick some of the red off the side of his thumb. He mostly just managed to spear it across his face, broadening his painted smile one-sidedly. “I like that. I like that I get to beat it out of little bats and birds. Ha.” The brief chortle repeated itself, and then inevitably built and built until the Joker was arched backwards with laughter, nearly screaming to himself as the humor tried to break him in half. Robin didn’t move. “You hear that, Bats?!” the Joker cheered, black-ringed eyes snapping around the room as if eager to find his nemesis in the shadows, “I finally got your favorite toy, and I _like it_!” His tone turned vicious. “This cat’s got a taste for _bird_ now, Batsy, so you’d better hope you can take care of the next one better than you took care of this one.”

At long last, the Joker tossed the crowbar aside, fastidiously curling his lip at it for the briefest second before flinging it across the room with unnecessary violence. Unnecessary violence was a tattoo written under the Joker’s skin. Good humor returning instantly, visible by the spring in his jaunty step, he crossed over to where Robin lay like a pile of tangled limbs, arms still manacled behind his back and too much blood to even tell how many of his bones rested at awkward angles. It was almost insult on top of injury that the Joker had no interest in the identity of the boy beneath the mask – all he cared about was that this was Robin, Batman’s sidekick. Why would he care about some boring kid with a normal life?  He hadn't so much as touched the mask.  

“Well, it’s been fun, Robby,” the Joker squatted down to pat the boy’s head companionably again, seeming not to notice the excess of blood. “I wish we had more time, but-” He shrugged. “-We don’t!” Finally noticing the red everywhere, the madman drew a long finger along Robin’s cheekbone, following the bottom contour of his mask, and lifted up his finger as if to inspect the…smear would be the wrong word, as there was far too much red even from that quick swipe to be called a mere smear. The Joker’s gloved hands had been coated in gore before that anyway. “Actually, I think you don’t have enough blood to keep up this conversation for much longer anyway, bird-boy,” he said with regret mangled by too much humor. He ruffled the boy’s hair again to leave it standing up in red-black spikes.

“Nice to really meet you!” the Joker cackled, and then he was getting up and trotting on out, his innate sense of Batman-related danger telling him that the Bat would arrive any time now to save his little bird. Too bad he’d be too late.

~^~

The last thing that Robin – almost unconscious but not quite, almost dead but not there yet – heard was a faint, troubling beep and the spine-scraping sound of the Joker’s laughter before it was cut off by a door slamming. Even with his ears ringing and his head filled with the throbbing pulse of his own ragged heartbeat, Robin recognized the sound of a lock sliding home, and groaned in resignation to the sound.

Every inch of him was beyond pain, and he could feel coherence slipping away.

The world felt distant, and he wanted to reach out and grasp it desperately in his fingers, if he thought he could hold on.  It was hard to hold things with broken, blood-slicked fingers...

He wasn’t an idiot. He knew the generally accepted results that came about after as many blows to the head as he’d taken. To say that his thoughts felt fragmented and shattered was to note that his body was likewise, more of him broken than not.

But he could still hear that steady beeping, and he didn’t know why.

He was afraid of the beeping and he didn’t know why.

Instincts were screaming and screaming and screaming, and he didn’t know why, because his ears were telling him that _he’d_ finally stopped screaming…finally stopped…stopped...

Jason shrieked, feeling all of the broken edges of his ribs grind together and slice with hot teeth at his flesh beneath the skin. Lying there in streaks of his own blood, a pool of it building, he stared through swollen eyelids at his hands, mysteriously in front of him. His instincts – all finely honed at Batman’s patient, constant insistence – gave a smug flare of triumph. He might have been more dead than alive, but he’d have to be _all_ dead before he forgot how to maneuver handcuffs in front of himself, broken bones be dammed. The pain was intense, but somehow he found it funny that he didn’t care. Why? Because it was barely a drop in the ocean compared to the rest of the pain burning in his flesh and bones.

The beeping. It was still going. Laboriously, still listening to his instincts (the only part of him functioning worth a plugged nickel, he realized), Robin turned his head to try and zero in on the sound.  He found it easily enough. And what he saw nearly made him wish he’d just died with that last impact of the Joker’s crowbar.

He saw the numbers ticking down, and he easily recognized the time-bomb for what it was.

Two options arose, one easy – oh, so easy – one hard. The first was to watch the numbers tick down until there were only three…then two…then one…then nothing left but a blast that would take apart the last bits of him that the Joker had left intact. The Joker might have been crazy, but he knew bombs, and the madman would have packed enough punch into one to make sure that Robin was obliterated in seconds. It wasn’t mercy. It was commonsense on the part of a man who had no sense apart from a twisted need to take things apart until they stopped breathing.

Robin’s instincts shuddered at that option, nearly turning off, nearly turning away before he reached out his mental, stubborn hand and grabbed onto them. If his instincts were all he had, he wasn’t going to let them off the hook. With that determined thought firmly secure in his mind, and the neurons not completely smashed in his brain firing with rapid sparks, the beaten sidekick dragged and arm under him. The arm collapsed; bones were broken. So he tried the other one, feeling the drag of the cuffs as they pulled the broken limb along. Muscles shrieked and trembled, but the pain could hardly get worse, and all Robin could think was that Batman would never forgive him if he just let himself die in a bomb explosion.  Knowing Bruce and his martyr-complex, he'd never forgive himself either, and that was somehow even more galvanizing than the threat of impending, explosive death.

The boy dragged himself all the way to the bomb, and when he got to it, collapsing on the verge of unconsciousness against a crate, he tore into the device with his bare hands.  It was good that he was nearly blacked out, because bared, bloodstained, manacled hands were not made to take apart a bomb, especially when those hands lack delicacy and have only tenacity.  Oh, sure, on a good day Jason could disarm a bomb - Bruce had taught him _something_ , after all - but this was so far from a good day that he may as well have been an animal tearing with its teeth.  His hands were a bloody wreck when Robin finally slid down against the floor, the last of his light blinking out, letting him retreat into the darkness. He didn't even care whether he'd diffused the bomb or not, because it was suddenly hard to care...

~^~

He might have been proud to note that, when Batman arrived – a force of nature all in black, more desperation than he’d ever admit painted on his masked face – he stared with something close to shock at the mass of wires that was all that remained of what had originally been the Joker’s bomb.  It looked as though it had been chewed up and spat out by a bear, although it was covered and streaked in red, not unlike the floor in a path from across the room.  Then Batman could only look at what remained of what had originally been his Robin, his responsibility, his boy. Blood couldn't hide everything, but there was enough of it that it somehow managed to nearly block out everything in the world. “Come on, Robin,” Bruce said quietly, his gruff voice soft because it didn’t have to reach any further that Jason’s ear as he gently scooped the boy up, “I’m taking you home.” Not a squeak, not a whimper, as strong hands and powerful arms brushed against split skin and cradled broken bones.  Robin was too far gone for that, but Batman was careful anyway, as if he were handling newly-spun glass instead of a mostly-dead body with too many wounds to count.  

Batman was practical, after all - Batman was sensible.  Moving such a battered body at all was a risk, so he knew he had to be careful.  Beneath those layers of logic, beneath the Batman mask, Bruce Wayne simply couldn't fathom the idea of hurting Jason even an ounce more. He could feel faint breath against his cheek when he leaned in close, and the bloodstains were still widening – a sign that a heart must still be beating, pushing more blood out past the breached skin. Aware that time was now of the essence – ticking away just as that bomb must have been ticking away, for Robin to have ripped at it so ruthlessly – Batman moved with all of the speed he could out of the building.

He only stalled for a couple of moments, just long enough so that the bomb – jury-rigged into merciless action once again – went off in their wake.

Logically, it was so that the Joker never knew that he’d failed – that Batman’s sidekick was still alive, if only barely.

Beneath the logic…the act of violence suited Bruce’s temper just fine as fiery light lit the darkness far behind them and the concussion hit his back like a heavy kiss.

~^~

 

He thought he could hear tapping.  Tap-tap-tapping on his skull, a crowbar’s kiss, a maniac knocking.  It made the pain sway and echo like a dance-tune, the agony in his skull weaving back and forth like a snake to a charmer’s pipe.  The sensation was somewhere between dizzying, soothing, and terrifying - a combination of sensations that he didn’t know could go together, but did anyway.  His brain warped and buckled to make them fit.  He was breaking himself apart to make new puzzle-pieces that fell in line…

Somewhere in there was the urge to open his eyes, and for the first time in… seconds, millenia?  How long had he been trying…? - it worked.  Dim lights swam into view and the peppered, rare stars of green from a machine that beeped nearby.  The only thing familiar at all, both outside of his skull and in it, was that beeping, because wasn’t that what a bomb said when it was ticking down?  He just hoped that he could figure out what his own name was before it went off.

“Where…?” he tried to croak out, but was startled by the way his entire throat felt like it was stuck together - Velcro instead of flesh.  It hurt, but then again, most of him hurt.  A new piece of pain was more confusing than it was troubling, but at least the tapping sound was fading away like a dream…

A shadow shifted, cracking itself away from the rest of the dimness and coming forward into the meagre light of a bedside lamp.  The boy on the bed flinched, grabbing for something, and this time the pain was enough that it ripped through the surface-agony that he’d been sleeping in - it was like falling asleep beneath bone-crushing ice, cuddling up to frostbite, and then realizing that the only thing more painful than that was suddenly breaking free and into the burning, living world.  The thin crust of pain shredded him on the way through, and the world was suddenly a place made out of fire.

“Jason!” a low voice barked, its tone somehow familiar but the edge of fear not.  A hand reached out to him, but he barely felt it, because the pain was making him forget everything.  How could he escape it?  How?!  That’s all he wanted to know in the world, and he stared up dazedly and desperately at the worried - fearful - face hanging over him with its black hair and grey eyes.  That face should have been familiar, but all Jason wanted… all Jason… Jason…

He couldn’t take this pain.

He’d broken through the icy equilibrium of pain only to lose his strength and crash right back down into it, returning to the cold darkness beneath.  

~^~

The second time that Jason woke up, it was to a feeling like spiderwebs in his brain.  It didn’t make his thoughts foggy, exactly - it didn’t feel as cotton-y as one would expect - instead it just felt like thin, tremulous threads were holding every inch of it together.  Distantly, he wondered if there was more cobweb than thought, and what that meant about the rest of him…

Jason, though.  The name was intact, and he connected with it like someone pulling on a glove that had been run over by a truck a few times; it fit.. .sort of.  He knew he was Jason, but he had to repeat it a few times to himself before he got the idea to stick, and then he had to wonder whether that should terrify him.

“Jason?”  It was the same voice from before - the shadow from shadows.  It was more careful now, rough and low and controlled.  Only then did Jason realize that his eyes were open, and had been open for an indeterminate amount of time, which confused him.  He pulled his brows down above his eyes, feeling something like stitches pull at his skin.  

“Yeah?” he finally croaked in what felt a lot like normalcy.  He even turned his head, and with more lights on, he was looking at a man and not a chunk of moving dark.  Recognition was slow, but with it came something like an ache behind his chest, and suddenly his eyes felt hot and damp around the edges.  “Bruce?” he asked in a significantly more quiet voice, one that squeaked through a throat still too dry.

Bruce’s face had been a wary mask, but suddenly it broke apart, and naked relief flashed there for a second.  He reached out one hand, and Jason mewled a bit as it landed on his shoulder - he didn’t whine because it caused a twinge of pain, but because it kept him from moving closer, which was suddenly all he wanted to do.  He couldn’t even remember where he was or why he was here, but he knew that he suddenly wanted to be right there in Bruce’s lap, something that he had never, ever wanted before.  That scared him as much as anything else, and suddenly he heard that tap-tap-tapping at the back of his head again…

“Just…  Just lie still, Jason,” Mr. Wayne said, back to his usual controlled tone.  Emotion on his face was usually considered a major slip-up, but it seemed he was having a hard time keeping himself from looking both worried and relieved.  “Do you recognize me?”

“Of course I do.”  He felt that he should have snapped that, but it came out soft and worrisomely… undecided.  While Bruce had too many emotions to be normal, Jason had too few, and his voice felt flat and unnatural.  He suddenly felt it important to add, “I know who I am, too.”

Batman stiffened a bit at the tone - it was all wrong for Jason.  More so than Dick before him, Jason was a… very mouthy version of Robin.  Now he sounded as if only a fraction of him was awake beneath the blankets and bandages, and Bruce could only hope that it was due to the heavy painkillers he was on.  A bit awkwardly, he patted Jason’s shoulder, careful to avoid any of a dozen number of bruises, breaks, and dislocations in that small motion alone.  When Jason shifted a little, the man firmed his grip just slightly, once again making it clear that the boy wasn’t supposed to move.  “You’re in a hospital, Jason.  Staying still is the best thing for you right now,” he chided softly.

Only then did Jason look down at himself, and the look of surprise was shocking and devastating.  Bruce hoped to god that this was all an effect of the drugs, because Jason didn’t seem to be expecting so much of himself damaged.  

Then again, considering what the Joker had done to him, maybe that was a blessing.  

Before Jason could panic again, Bruce pushed aside his aloofness a little bit more and switched his grip to one white-wrapped hand.  Jason’s left hand was the least damaged, and Bruce curled the dexterous, pale fingers into his calloused grip.  “Jason, you’re all right.  You’re safe, and you’re all right.”  Bruce moved his other hand to cup the boy’s chin, tipping it up and away from the many signs of patched up damage.  

“What happened?” was the horrified squeak that answered him, and this was so much not like Jason that Bruce flinched.  

And then, with no warning whatsoever, Jason’s expression got flat and blank, and then his eyes rolled up in his head and he passed out again.  

~^~

****  
  



End file.
